Art

Monet and London

The Courtauld Gallery, London

4/5

Views of the Thames reunited

This slender exhibition features 21 canvases from Monet’s series ‘Views of the Thames’ which were exhibited together only once in Paris in 1904. It’s on this 120th anniversary of the Paris exhibition that the Courtauld succeeded in bringing the group together again, a short stroll from the Savoy where Monet stayed, saw these magnificent views and painted some of them. It is indeed significant and impressive to see these London paintings together, back in London, each coming from a different museum or collection. They show the Waterloo bridge, Charing Cross bridge and the Houses of Parliament, but the real subject is the Thames and the effects of the light and fog over its waters.

These works bring us back to a different time. We fortunately no longer experience these toxic but luminous industrial fogs over the Thames which Monet found poetic. The Waterloo bridge Monet painted no longer exists having been demolished in 1934. The current Waterloo bridge is not particularly beautiful, so it is nice to be reminded of the old bridge’s elegant classical arches. The Charing Cross railway bridge still survives hidden behind the new footbridges, but it can’t really be properly seen. The Houses of Parliament alone remain unchanged today, although the view from the Savoy is very different.

Monet was a master of variation and it is fascinating to compare these different versions. I found it particularly interesting to compare the two Charing Cross paintings, one from 1903 currently at Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, the other from 1902, the so-called Churchill’s Monet, from Chartwell. They are both delicate and diaphanous, with an unphotographable colour scheme and a small plume of smoke hidden in plain sight in the middle of the canvas. In the Lyon painting the bridge and the Houses of Parliament behind it are a striking against-the-light blue with the hazy sun above casting an orangey glow, while the Chartwell version is predominantly yellow, the sun having happily absorbed everything into its light. The Charing Cross bridge, quite a modern streamlined shape, functions as a plate offering these different sunny foods.

As for the Houses of Parliament, the painting from the Kunsthaus Zurich from 1904 shows them at their spikiest. An eerie vision of unrest at sunset with a colour scheme to match. Against the light again, blue building outlines on the background of an orange light. I often wonder what possessed the English to build a gothic parliament. It is such an unusual building, suggesting all manner of grandiose and unrealistic dreams, and although we are all by now so used to it, it is interesting to see it through the eyes of a foreigner who appreciated its romantic strangeness and found a way to show it to its advantage.

The highlight is the painting no 10, the middle of the series, called Waterloo bridge, veiled sun, painted in 1903. This stunning almost abstract canvas has been lent by a private collection. Mosly blue, it is lit by the last rays of the sun with faint orange highlights on the water, the bridge, and a few little sailboats before it. The factory chimneys on the south bank can barely be recognised through the smoke except for the faint vertical lines contrasting with the beautiful arches of the bridge and the small but full terracotta sails.

It strikes me that Monet is despite all appearances also sometimes a painter of unease. Although the colours can lull you into a pleasing sense of wellbeing, there is always in these paintings a chill in these waters, as there is also in the view at Antibes in the permanent collection you can see on your way out.

This is a must see for lovers of Monet and impressionism, but also interesting for Londoners to see their city in a different light. The city has changed beyond recognition, only the light on the Thames remains the same.